What is Your Body Telling You?

Imagine this. You are driving your nice new car down the road, and suddenly, the engine light comes on. Oh no! You just hope you can drive as far as the next garage to have the situation corrected. You talk to the mechanic and after looking at your car, he tells you he found the problem. He promises you that he can fix the problem rapidly and you agree to let him work on your car. He then proceeds to carefully put a piece of black tape over the engine light - et voila! - problem fixed. You complained that your engine light was on, well, now you cannot see it anymore. What do you think?

As absurd as the above situation seems, this is what we often do with our bodies! You have some pain? Take a painkiller. Heartburn? Take an antacid. Asthma? Take a puffer. A fever? Take an antipyretic. High blood pressure or high cholesterol? Bring it down with a pill. And the list goes on and on. The pain, the heartburn, etc. are all called symptoms. Symptoms are what your body uses to talkto you. Like the engine light in your car, symptoms are the way your body is telling you that something is wrong. As with the tip of the iceberg, there is often a lot more going on than what you see on the surface.

What would happen to your car if you just trusted that mechanic and kept driving the car? Right, it would probably break down some time down the road, and the damage caused would be far greater than the initial problem with which you started. As with the car, symptoms that are just suppressed without finding and correcting their cause is a recipe for disaster.

I am sure that we will all agree there is a place for medications. The problem is, too many people rely on them too heavily, and forget to take the necessary steps to improve their health because the symptoms are gone. Then their body wears out, breaks down, and after a while, the damage is often significantly worse.

As chiropractors, we find that interference to the nervous system caused by spinal misalignments, or subluxations, are often the cause of body malfunctions. When these subluxations have been there for a while and are not corrected, the body will often start “talking” to you in a way that you can understand – symptoms. When an adjustment is given, the function of the nervous system is improved and the body can work in a better manner. In a way, chiropractors try to find and correct the cause of the symptoms instead of just trying to mask them. As reviewed over numerous past articles, scientific research has shown that chiropractic can help with a multitude of ailments, such as back pain, headaches, colic, ear infections, ADHD, asthma, hypertension, heartburn, digestive problems, infertility, and more.

As chiropractors interested in holistic health, we also advocate and recommend lifestyle changes when needed, such as diet modifications, nutrition supplementation, exercise and stress reducing techniques, tailored to each patient.

So if you have been putting a piece of tape over the engine light of your body, isn’t it time for a chiropractic check-up?